Rolling the Hip in Poser 6

I use Poser 6, and the one problem I have is with the "roll" function for the SL avi's hips. It doesn't seem to animate. I hear that this may not be a problem in Poser 5. Anyone know?

E.g.: I want someone to stand in place, but sway to one side, thus angling their hips and legs. Like a dancer sticking her hip out. It looks fine in Poser. But in SL, the hip doesn't angle, and as a result the legs just slide, since I've changed their angle to follow the hip I want to roll. Any fix for this?

FWIW, I have no trouble spinning the hip, nor do I have trouble with the pitch/roll axis. It's solely the "roll" axis that confounds me.

I've been uploading test files to examine this problem more closely, and I wonder if it's just something about the way the SL avatar's hip meshes with the legs. I do see the hip roll, but perhaps not as much as I animated in Poser. And I do see the legs change their leg-to-hip angle somewhat, but again perhaps not as much as I animated in Poser. The result is that instead of feet staying locked in place and avi swaying her hips from side to side, I get the feet sliding around with some swaying of hips from side to side. Now, I never use Inverse Kinematics, because I often get weird results with IK (grotesque twists and whatnot), but perhaps I should break down and try IK again.

Incidentally, I have an analogous problem with male arms. They invariably stick out further from the male avi's body in-game than they seem to in Poser. E.g., if a guy hugs a gal, I have to animate it in Poser so that the guys' arms are in her spleen. But at least I know about that and can compensate for it systematically.

In this case, with the hip/leg thing, I'm not sure how to compensate. I suppose I can work around it, eventually, by trial & error -- upload a few seconds, tinker, re-upload, etc. But I'm still surprised that no one else seems to encounter this problem. (BTW, I have upgraded to Poser 6.0 for Windows, service pack 2. And I'm not an animation newb: I've produced and sold hundreds of animations.) Any suggestions?

Hey Ricky. Looks like you found the animation upload bug that we have been fighting LL to fix for over a month now. It looks as though it has to do with the hips. In some animations the hips to not actually move but the lower body (and oddly sometimes its the upper body instead) moves. Other times there is a jerk with the rest of the bits. The torso moves then the extremeties move with a jerk. IE like a car being towed. Then sometimes they both happen at the same time.

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As for the arm length. What I have done is to lengthen the arms in poser to compensate so I can animate a bit easier. Made it loads of help with my swing dances so they actually hold hands instead of what weirdness there was before. Its not going to work with every avie.. but its better then animating hands into spleens and the like.

Thanks for your reply, Luth! And I'm glad we talked in-game about this bug. It's really nasty. It doesn't matter whether I use kinematics to glue my feet to one spot: when I upload an animation, my feet slide instead of staying still. As you say, it's those pesky hips. Off to check out the link you posted.

One question: how did you lengthen the male avi's arms in Poser?

Hiya Ricky, glad to have been of some help.

To lengthen the arms, you change the xscale in the shoulder and forarm.

Ah, thanks, Luth.

Hey Luth, how much do you extend the arms? I tried 20%, and that certainly improved things. But maybe was a bit too long?

Its all really trial and error. Mine was I think 38% for the male. If 20% is too long, then try 15%.. then keep trying until you find the exact proportion. It will be more in upload costs now, but less in the future as you wont have to compensate for it anymore. Make a note of it, then add that to your default starting file so you don't have to worry about it again

Thanks. Do you adjust the female too?

Yep. I did them both in the same poser file with them standing arms length apart and holding hands. Its not going to be perfect for every avie since you can adjust arm length. So the two that I test it on have the arm parameters in the middle of the slider. At least now most people look like they are holding hands instead of weird floating going on.

Ah, ok; thanks.

Luth, one more question for you: my male avatar's hands are consistently further apart in SL than they appear in Poser. Perhaps most SL guys (including my avatar) have chosen to broaden their chest or shoulders or something? Do you address this issue at all, say by broadening the Poser chest or shoulders of the male?

Mea culpa. It looks like I mistakenly made things worse in an attempt to improve the quality of uploaded animations.

The hip animation problem should be fixed in the next 1.8 release (hopefully next week).

Richard N.

Animators rejoice!
Hip rolling will be back!

Woo hoo! Great news!

LATEST UPDATE!

This is important to us to fix! Karen has just posted:



Please spread the word. I PMed a bunch of ya, IMed some more who didn't have PMs on in the SL Forums.

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